If you’re involved in desktop publishing, the name PageMaker is as common as IBM and Microsoft. If you’re a graphics designer, you’ll likely remember that Adobe failed to keep pace with the market and Quark Xpress long ago surpassed PageMaker in its quest for the professional market.
While Quark was a dream to use, PageMaker seemed unwieldly, cumbersome and, rarely intuitive. As a result, PageMaker continued to lose market share to its rival for years. Even the high cost of Quark (the current U.S. street price is $790 or 36, 800 INR) has failed to check its domination. About the only advantages offered by PageMaker was its lower price and availability for both the Mac and PC. Quark steadfastly maintained its Mac only stance for years before finally offering a PC version.
Now, with version 6.5, Adobe seems to have abandoned the professional struggle and set its sights on another market niche. Recognizing that most small businesses aren’t equipped with duel platform graphics shops and can’t afford high end layout programs, PageMaker 6.5 features a price that’s about $200 (9, 320 INR) lower than its rival. It also offers an array of new features that makes it easier to use and takes advantage of the wider availability of the PC and Windows operating systems.
This new version offers plenty of incentives to the publishers of newsletters and graphics for small businesses and organizations. There are over 300 templates offering professional designs for everything from business cards to brochures. It’s possible to select a design, add copy and illustrations, save the file to disk and, have it printed.
To make the PageMaker package even more attractive, several thousand quality photos, illustrations, and clip art files are included. There are also plenty of type fonts plus many of the True Type fonts on your computer are also available for PageMaker import.
Unlike some of the low-end layout programs, PageMaker has a long heritage of producing ready to print materials. Once you’ve used your computer’s printer to make proofing samples of your work, the software will reset the file for high resolution printing, save the file to disk, or prepare it for electronic transmission to the printer of your choice.
If most of your work is directed toward the Internet, it’s unlikely that PageMaker will be of much interest. Its output files are designed primarily for printing. Converting them to jpeg or gif formats is impossible without additional software. While PageMaker readily imports scans and files from most other photo and graphic programs, this tends to be a one-way street. Importing PageMaker files to Adobe’s own Photoshop, for example, is almost impossible.
If you’re in that graphics niche I mentioned above, PageMaker can be a real asset. It’s easy to learn and can help you turn out quality materials for dozens of requirements.
Adobe offers one other added attraction. A copy of Photoshop 5.0 LE is included in the software package at no additional cost. The street price for the full version of PageMaker 6.5 is currently $475 (22, 135 INR.) However, if you have an older version, an upgrade is available for about $150 (6, 990 INR.)